{"id":21578,"date":"2026-04-22T10:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/22\/los-angeles-subway-going-underground\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T10:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:11:08","slug":"los-angeles-subway-going-underground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/22\/los-angeles-subway-going-underground\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles is finally going underground"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Los Angeles deserves its reputation as the quintessential car city\u2014the rhythms of its 2,200 square miles are dictated by wide boulevards and concrete arcs of freeways. But it once had a world-class rail transit system, and for the last three decades, the city has been rebuilding a network of trolleys and subways. In May, a new four-mile segment with three new subway stations will open along Wilshire Boulevard, a key east-west corridor that connects downtown LA to the Pacific Ocean. What today can be an hours-long drive through a busy, museum-\u00adpacked stretch of the city will be, if all goes well, a 25-minute train ride.<\/p>\n

The existence of subway stops in this part of town\u2014known as Miracle Mile\u2014is a technological triumph over geography and geology. The ground underneath it is literally a disaster waiting to happen\u2014it\u2019s tarry and full of methane. One of those methane deposits actually exploded in 1985, destroying a department store in the neighborhood. In response, the city pushed its new train routes to other parts of town.<\/p>\n

These days, dirt full of flammable goo is no longer a problem. \u201cThe technology finally caught up with the concerns,\u201d says LA Metro\u2019s James Cohen, a longtime manager of the engineering for this stretch of subway. The key was an earth-pressure-\u00adbalance tunnel-boring machine, an automated digger that is designed to chew through ground packed with explosive gas. It sends removed dirt topside via conveyor belts and slides precast concrete liner segments into the tunnel, which are joined together with gaskets to create a gas- and waterproof tube. All that let the machine dig about 50 feet every day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"a
A Metro train pulls into La Cienega station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Fairfax
Art by Susan Silton at the Fairfax station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Eamon
Art by Eamon Ore-Giron at the La Brea station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile, engineers excavated the stations from the street level down. They worked mostly on weekends, digging out a space and then decking it with concrete so that work could go on underneath while LA drivers continued to exercise their God-given right to get around by car above.<\/p>\n

Did the project finish on time? No. Did it come in under budget? Also no; this segment alone cost nearly $4 billion. Is the city now racing to build housing and walkable areas to take full advantage of the extension? Oh, please. Yet the new stations still manage to feel, in the end, transformative\u2014as if Los Angeles\u2019s train has finally come in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles deserves its reputation as the quintessential car city\u2014the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}